Category: Taxes

The so-called “Cadillac Tax” is a 40 percent excise tax on the value of employer-sponsored health coverage that exceeds certain benefit thresholds, estimated to be approximately $10,800 for employee-only plans and $29,100 for family plans when the tax takes effect in 2020.

While the name may imply the tax applies to a few individuals with luxury health coverage, the truth is it extends much further. 175 million Americans – including retirees, low- and moderate-income families, public sector employees, small business owners and the selfemployed – currently depend on employer-sponsored health coverage and they are all at risk.

On behalf of the American Benefits Council, Public Opinion Strategies conducted a nationwide online survey of 1,200 registered voters from January 29 to February 3, 2016. These findings indicate that voter support for the “Cadillac Tax” is dwarfed by support for repeal.

Voters are more likely to re-elect their representative if they voted to repeal the “Cadillac” tax, though a majority of voters say it makes no real difference in their vote, a report out today from the American Benefits Council says.

Overall, 37 percent of voters said their congressman voting to repeal the tax would make them more likely to re-elect their representative, while 16 percent said it would make them less likely to do so. Still, 47 percent said the vote made no difference. The report was released by the Alliance to Fight the 40, a coalition of groups advocating to repeal the tax on high-cost health plans.

President Obama and the Supreme Court have effectively replaced the ACA with something we now call “ObamaCare.”

Unfortunately, ObamaCare doesn’t work much better than the ACA. ObamaCare is still causing Americans to lose their health plans, still driving premiums higher, and still causing their coverage to erode.

Obamacare turns six and Americans are left with broken promises. Millions have lost their healthcare plans, and, for those faced with narrowing provider networks, their choice of doctors is also shrinking.

The president’s broken promises have multiplied over the past six years and now we’re faced with rising costs, bigger middle class tax bills, design flaws and unworkable provisions. In 2017, we can, and must, do better.

Republican leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have asked America’s Health Insurance Plans and several major insurance companies to brief staffers by next week on reinsurance payments to insurers by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) and Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) wrote to Marilyn Tavenner, president and CEO of AHIP, as well as Aetna, Anthem, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, Humana and UnitedHealth Group asking for briefings by March 15. The request follows an announcement made last month by CMS that it would use funds from the Department of the Treasury to make reinsurance payments to insurers, and that violates federal law, they write.

Most people who got tax credits to buy insurance under the federal health law will be repaying part of them for the second year in a row, according to a leading tax preparer.

H&R Block Inc. executives said Tuesday that, to date, 60% of 2015 tax filers with the credit have found that they owe the government money because they had been credited too much. That is up from 52% last year, the first year in which filers had to reckon with reporting the credit and figuring out if their income projections had been accurate.

On average, tax filers were repaying almost $580 each for excessive credits, up from $530 for overpayments during the 2014 filing year.

If you bought health insurance last year through Obamacare, you may be pleasantly surprised at tax time to find out you have money coming to you.

But it’s just as likely the surprise will go the other way: You might owe Uncle Sam some money if the government subsidy you received for buying insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace was too large based on your income. And if you skipped buying health insurance entirely, you probably will face a penalty. On average, those penalties this year are running $383 among H&R Block customers. That’s an increase from $172 a year ago.

If this is confusing or unpleasant, don’t decide to ignore the matter.

Transitional Reinsurance is a key part of the Affordable Care Act. It’s a component of a set of provisions designed to lure private health insurers into selling insurance on various Exchanges. Without continued private insurer participation, Obamacare as we know it falls apart. Congress thought it needed lures (1) because health insurers did not have much experience with the medical expenses of the population they would be insuring and (2) because Congress was outlawing health insurers’ favorite technique for staying profitable: pricing policies according to the predicted medical expenses of the insured. Congress set the hook by giving insurers selling on the Exchanges something for free that they otherwise would have to pay for: reinsurance. With “Transitional Reinsurance” The federal government would itself pick up the bill three years for much of the expense of insureds who ended up having high medical expenses.

But, as with lunch, there is really no such thing as free reinsurance.